The most unusual job interview questions of 2011

FORTUNE — For most of us, coming up with dazzling replies to the perennial standard interview queries — say, “What’s your greatest weakness?” or “Where do you see yourself in five years?” — is plenty challenging. But what would you say if a hiring manager asked you, “What do you think of garden gnomes?” Or how about: “Would Mahatma Gandhi have made a good software engineer?”

To find the year’s most unusual questions, researchers at career site Glassdoor combed through job seekers’ reviews of about 115,000 interviews at more than 26,000 companies. Here is a sampling of what they found:

“How many people are using Facebook in San Francisco at 2:30 on a Friday?” — Google GOOG (vendor relations manager)

“Just entertain me for five minutes. I’m not going to talk.” — Acosta (leadership development program associate)

“If Germans were the tallest people in the world, how would you prove it?” — Hewlett-Packard hpq (product marketing manager)

“Given 20 ‘destructible’ light bulbs (which break at a certain height), and a building with 100 floors, how would you determine the height where the light bulbs break?” — Qualcomm qcom (engineer)

“What do you think of garden gnomes?” — Trader Joe’s (team member)

“Would Mahatma Gandhi have made a good software engineer?” — Deloitte (analyst)

“If you could be the #1 employee but have all your coworkers dislike you, or be ranked #15 and have all your coworkers like you, which would you choose?” — ADP (inside sales associate)